Changing the license to MIT

[kayoub5]

Currently, sharppcap uses the LGPL license, this prevents using sharppcap in AOH and making self-contained apps, without making the whole application GPL or LGPL licensed.

This discussion is an attempt to get the approval from all the copyright holders and contributors of the project, to switch the license to MIT.

If your name is listed below, please write a comment to explicitly approve or decline the license change.

Known Copyright Holders

Who	Approved	Comment
Ayoub Kaanich kayoub5@live.com	✔️
Chris Morgan chmorgan@gmail.com	✔️
Evan Plaice evanplaice@gmail.com		Contribution limited to Tutorial and Examples in b6e9899 and 147bc90
Noah Potash noah.potash@outbreaklabs.com	✔️
Phillip Lemon lucidcomms@gmail.com	✔️
Tamir Gal tamir@tamirgal.com	✔️

Known Contributors

Who	Lines	Percent	Username	Approved
Chris Morgan	11012	52.36%	@chmorgan	✔️
Ayoub Kaanich	8611	40.94%	@kayoub5	✔️
Hendrik Eckardt	378	1.80%	@heck-gd	✔️
Jan Pluskal	344	1.64%	@pluskal	✔️
Lex Li	242	1.15%	@lextm	✔️
houcem benali	114	0.54%	@sensokame	✔️
Evan Plaice	109	0.52%	@evanplaice
Noah Potash	51	0.24%	@SapientGuardian	✔️
Ilya Botov	38	0.18%	@ARHARUP	✔️
Sterlinghv	37	0.18%	@Sterlinghv	✔️
Cameron Elliott	34	0.16%	@cameronelliott	✔️
paul	27	0.13%	@zpaul48
Manuel Jacob	9	0.04%	@MJay1337
Viliam Letavay	8	0.04%	@fukaminakrize	✔️
D10100111001	6	0.03%	@D10100111001
tamirgal	4	0.02%	@tamirgal	✔️
Mauro Levra	3	0.01%	@Nazardo	✔️
Trivalik	2	0.01%	@trivalik	✔️
Fidel Perez-Smith	1	0.00%	@fiddyschmitt	✔️

Verdict

Mozilla's lawyers believed it would be acceptable for Mozilla to make a good-faith effort to contract all contributors and then re-license, even if 5% of the contributors were unreachable (and none of the contributors disapproved).

you can read more about it in https://law.stackexchange.com/a/195

In our case, the contributors that voted, all voted in favor of changing the license, the ones that did not, have code contribution that consist of less than 1% of the current code base.

The copyright holders all agreed to change the license, except for "Evan Plaice" who is yet to reply, his contribution is limited to tutorial and documentation, thus does not consist a blocker for changing the library license.

Based on the votes, the small contribution size of the of the ones who did not vote, we may proceed on changing the project license, still I would give it a few days in hope that the remaining contributors do reply.

Context

This discussion was originally started in #481

[fiddyschmitt]

Sounds great! Yes from me

[chmorgan]

Yes for me as well.

…

On Sat, Nov 25, 2023 at 8:01 AM Fidel Perez-Smith ***@***.***> wrote: Sounds great! Yes from me — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#487 (comment)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AAJH4AB6WSUOYSXK3F54WKLYGHT33AVCNFSM6AAAAAA72BX2MOVHI2DSMVQWIX3LMV43SRDJONRXK43TNFXW4Q3PNVWWK3TUHM3TMNRWGA3TE> . You are receiving this because you were mentioned.Message ID: ***@***.***>

[sensokame]

Yes for me as well

[lextm]

Here I approve the license change for the portion of code I made.

[kayoub5]

@chmorgan do you happen to know what Tamir Gal username is?

[Sterlinghv]

Yes for me!

[cameronelliott]

I explicitly approve

[chmorgan]

I do, forwarded him the email and I’ll loop you in if he doesn’t reply to the ticket and responds to me instead.

…

On Sat, Nov 25, 2023 at 1:03 PM Ayoub Kaanich ***@***.***> wrote: @chmorgan <https://github.com/chmorgan> do you happen to know what Tamir Gal username is? — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#487 (comment)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AAJH4AHQSMS44BHVQGZYRFTYGIXHNAVCNFSM6AAAAAA72BX2MOVHI2DSMVQWIX3LMV43SRDJONRXK43TNFXW4Q3PNVWWK3TUHM3TMNRXHAYDI> . You are receiving this because you were mentioned.Message ID: ***@***.***>

[ARHARUP]

Sure why not. I approve

[SapientGuardian]

I approve

[trivalik]

I approve

[kayoub5]

@chmorgan I see "Phillip Lemon" in the copyright notices, but no commits from him are recorded in git, any idea what did he contribute?

[chmorgan]

Hi Ayoub. He provided permission to relicense his contributions to any license back in 2009 when the lgpl license was made explicit. Can’t recall what the contributions were. I have an email from him stating this. I can ask him if he’s ok with me sharing the email with you, if you’d like something more formal, but it’s been a while since we’ve had any communications, it sure if the email address is active etc. Chris

…

On Sun, Nov 26, 2023 at 5:51 AM Ayoub Kaanich ***@***.***> wrote: @chmorgan <https://github.com/chmorgan> I see "Phillip Lemon" in the copyright notices, but no commits from him are recorded in git, any idea what did he contribute? — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#487 (comment)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AAJH4AHYSEQWMMXEYA3BVTTYGMNL7AVCNFSM6AAAAAA72BX2MOVHI2DSMVQWIX3LMV43SRDJONRXK43TNFXW4Q3PNVWWK3TUHM3TMNZQHA4TG> . You are receiving this because you were mentioned.Message ID: ***@***.***>

[meck-gd]

I approve the license change.

[Nazardo]

Great idea, I approve.

[fukaminakrize]

I approve

[pluskal]

Definitely approve! Thanks :)

[tamirgal]

Hello,
Great to see this project still kicking. I'm OK with the license change.
Thanks,
Tamir